Bekenstein's generalized second law of thermodynamics: the role of the hoop conjecture

DOI10.1016/J.PHYSLETB.2015.10.052MaRDI QIDQ526324zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Shahar Hod

Publication date 10 May 2017

Published in Physics Letters B (Search for Journal in Brave)

Copyright license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.03665

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Measures of information, entropy (94A17) Black holes (83C57) Foundations of thermodynamics and heat transfer (80A05)

Abstract: Bekenstein's generalized second law (GSL) of thermodynamics asserts that the sum of black-hole entropy, $S_{extBH}=A{c}^3/4hbarG$ (here $A$ is the black-hole surface area), and the ordinary entropy of matter and radiation fields in the black-hole exterior region never decreases. We here re-analyze an intriguing gedanken experiment which was designed by Bekenstein to challenge the GSL. In this historical gedanken experiment an entropy-bearing box is lowered into a charged Reissner-Nordstr"om black hole. For the GSL to work, the resulting increase in the black-hole surface area (entropy) must compensate for the loss of the box's entropy. We show that if the box can be lowered adiabatically all the way down to the black-hole horizon, as previously assumed in the literature, then for near-extremal black holes the resulting increase in black-hole surface-area (due to the assimilation of the box by the black hole) may become too small to compensate for the loss of the box's entropy. In order to resolve this apparent violation of the GSL, we here suggest to use a generalized version of the hoop conjecture. In particular, assuming that a physical system of mass $M$ and electric charge $Q$ forms a black hole if its circumference radius $r_{extc}$ is equal to (or smaller than) the corresponding Reissner-Nordstr"om black-hole radius $r_{extRN}=M+sqrt{M}^2-Q^2$, we prove that a new (and larger) horizon is already formed before the entropy-bearing box reaches the horizon of the original near-extremal black hole. This result, which seems to have been overlooked in previous analyzes of the composed black-hole-box system, ensures the validity of Bekenstein's GSL in this famous gedanken experiment.

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Cites work

• Challenging the generalized second law
• Particle creation by black holes
• Sharp bounds on the critical stability radius for relativistic charged spheres
• The art of science: Interview with Professor John Archibald Wheeler

Cited in

(13)

• Challenging the generalized second law
• Investigations on hoop conjecture for horizonless spherical charged stars
• Upper bound on the center-of-mass energy of the collisional Penrose process
• On the hoop conjecture in Einstein gravity coupled to nonlinear electrodynamics
• Israel-Stewart approach to viscous dissipative extended holographic Ricci dark energy dominated universe
• Exploring black holes as particle accelerators: hoop-radius, target particles and escaping conditions
• A conjectured universal relation for black holes and horizonless compact stars
• Large entropy production inside black holes: a simple model
• Generalized second law and the Bekenstein entropy bound in Gedankenexperiments with black holes
• The black hole dynamical horizon and generalized second law of thermodynamics
• Cosmic censorship and weak gravity conjecture in the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory
• A lower bound on the Bekenstein-Hawking temperature of black holes
• Extremal bifurcations of rotating \(\mathrm{AdS}_4\) black holes

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